Learning and Movement

By Bette Lamont, M.A. D.M.T.
Developmental Movement Center
12351 Lake City Way NE, Ste 102
Seattle, WA 98125
(206) 525-8038
dmc@developmentalmovement.org

Swooping, diving, reaching and pounding, the body, articulate and bold, moves before us, a pleasure to behold. It has been suggested and observed by many writers on movement education that clear and articulate movement reflects clear and articulate mental processes; that those who move well, learn well.
So we send our children to swimming and dance lessons, basketball camp and gymnastics, helping them grow in the most well-rounded way we can provide. And we are wise to do so. Movement educators and dance teachers like Anne Gilbert and others on the faculty of the Creative Dance Center of Seattle, Washington, have long been exploring and demonstrating the relationship between movement skills and academic skills, between movement in the dance studio and movement throughout life.
The baby programs his motor/perceptual equipment, nerves and brain cells by using his whole body and all of his senses.
Yet even before children are old enough to touch small toes to the hardwood floor of a dance studio or the mats of a gymnasium, powerful movement processes
are at work helping them organize sensory and motor systems in order to make sense of their world. The brain has a plan for development that involves intensive and specific motor activities to make full use of our complicated nervous system. It is well known that the nervous system of each new human being must go though a definite series of developmental stages before the brain can operate at its full potential. The baby "programs" his motor! perceptual equipment, nerves and brain cells by using his whole body and all of his senses.
This process, called "neurological organization," describes the evolution of the central nervous system between birth and 6-8 years. (More recent studies have also documented essential activities of the healthy fetus, which will not be included in this article.)
The newborn infant, all nervous system pieces in place, is already well on the way to developing an organized nervous system. The apparently random squiggling of arms and legs around a torso that does not propel forward despite the baby's efforts will soon tum into a more organized pattern. Most babies will, by 2 1h to 7 months, begin to organize this movement to get themselves off the spot, often in an urgent push away from perceived danger (such as a loud noise or a wet diaper). As this early belly crawling evolves into a consistent workable pattern, the baby now has mobility, and is beginning to use horizontal tracking of the eyes, which will later contribute to reading. Lumbar and cervical curves become stabilized, as does the rotation of the hips in their sockets. The baby is putting together a sensory and motor world of a very specific nature that will put a foundation in place for the next stage of creeping.

As the baby begins to creep on hands and knees, sometime between 7 months and 1 year, he puts distance between himself and the floor. Now balance mechanisms must become developed. The curvy little baby legs start to align with hip sockets and feet in preparation for standing. A greater distance from the floor creates new demands on the eyes as they begin their journey toward convergence. Vertical eye tracking is a part of the growth triggered by creeping, and a skill that will be ultimately essential for academic learning.
While these observable changes are taking place, countless other neurological tasks become stimulated and organized by these very necessary stages of development. Among these, detail perception and focusing, body temperature and waking/sleeping cycles, suppression of newborn reflexes, and the
emergence of a more mature human being begin to occur in very observable ways during this period of creeping. By 12 months, many children are doing those tasks that we recognize will lead to adult skills development, namely walking and talking. By 12 months, the brain has already learned 50% OF EVERYTHING IT WILL EVER KNOW! And the child hasn't even entered preschool.
The journey from 1 to 8 years old involves an explosion of learning as we know it: language and music, bike riding and clock reading, tying shoe laces, finding Seattle on a map. However, for those children who are slow to read, who fidget and distract others through 2nd grade, and who must still wear Velcro shoes at 9, this brief overview of development may provide a key to gaps that may be responsible for these problems. If, in fact, this step-by-step development of the central nervous system is a key to mature, organized learning and physical skill, then perhaps we could use this same process to put into place functions that were missed.
How could such basic instinctive activities be missed by any baby? The list of answers is long. In the name of convenience, love or safety, we often keep babies off the floor for much of their first year in walkers, jumpers, car seats, or loving arms. A baby who has had surgery in the first six months of his life is often restrained until stitches heal or bones knit; children who have lived their early months in extreme deprivation, such as orphans brought out of Eastern Europe, may never have had an opportunity to test their mettle against the floor, which the Gesell Institute calls, "the athletic field of the child." Even when developmental opportunity is not lacking, birth trauma, a high fever, a blow to the head, or experiences that emotionally traumatize the child (adoption, the death of a parent before age one, war, etc.) can cause neurological dysfunctions that may be responsible for what may later appear as learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, behavior disorders, memory programs, speech, balance or filtering programs, difficulty sleeping, .and a host of other difficulties that disrupt the flow of normal childhood development.
Often, taking children back through missed or disorganized developmental stages can correct flaws in their perceptual processes and enhance their intellectual, academic, and physical functioning and coordination. Parents whose children, for whatever reason, missed some of these early stages, may be surprised to find their child described in some of the words in this brief article. A review of the child's history and a check of basic sensory and motor skills can often provide answers to long-asked questions.
The Learning Process and Developmental Movement
The Impact of Movement on the Mind and its Growth

When Alice was first brought to the Developmental Movement Center she was 11 years old and had lived in a stable family situation for only 7 months. Before that time she had been living in a car with her manic-depressive mother in the streets of a northern California city. She had been physically abused and had received at least one
concussion -- from her mother, who hit her. Her earliest months had been equally difficult. Born to a mother who had used street drugs during the pregnancy, Alice was premature and was then given oxygen in excess at her birth.
When her father discovered her whereabouts from a newspaper article about the homeless, Child Protective Services sent Alice to live with him. He had been seeking effective therapy for Alice since her first month with him, including nutritional therapy, counseling, play therapy, and biofeedback. None of these had impacted her academic and behavioral problems. Her father reported she was four grades behind in all subjects and acted out violently in school.
The child he brought to the Developmental Movement Center in September 1987 was a pretty girl, physically immature for her age, who seemed disoriented and lost. Her father reported she was four grades behind in all subjects and acted out violently in school. A special educational program had been considering removing her from class because she could not be handled. She was disoriented in time could not understand that a week had seven days and a year, twelve months. Alice's speech was slurred to the point of being incomprehensible and she used frequent baby talk.
Physically, Alice was both stiff and clumsy. She hated being touched, and her right foot looked clubbed. She reported frequent pain in her right hip, leg, and foot. She was hypersensitive to light and sound, and she suffered from nightmares.
While Alice did have some very difficult problems, she was not atypical of the children and adults who benefit from Developmental Movement Therapy programs. Not only was Alice minimally brain damaged, she had also been denied the opportunity to do the developmental physical activities that are so essential to normal growth of both the body and the central nervous system.
We are born with a magnificent brain and central nervous system. After birth the growth
of our nervous system and brain continues at a steady pace, completing its development in six to eight years. During those years, the child works hard at stimulating the nervous system through play activities that are typical of infancy and early childhood: creeping, crawling, tumbling, spinning, etc. If this process unfolds as designed, children will learn to walk, talk, sing, to choose and discriminate well, to plan, remember and create, to share their experiences, and to love. If a child is lucky enough to be born without trauma to the central nervous system or to receive damage to it later, and if parents have given the child the opportunity to do their important developmental work, this system serves the person well, creatively, for a lifetime.
At the Developmental Movement Center we work with the children and adults who are not so lucky. Alice is one of the not so lucky. The purpose of Developmental Movement Therapy is to stimulate the brain appropriately 10 impact neurological dysfunctions that affect learning, perceiving, motor function, and behavior.
We've all heard the phrase, "use it or lose it," especially in relation to brain efficiency. Developmental Movement Therapy is based on the idea that you have to "use it," i.e., to stimulate the brain in the right way. If you want to develop your biceps, you probably won't choose running as your primary physical exercise. Similarly, if you want to enhance the functions of lower brain areas, you don't practice French or long division. What you do is get down on the floor and do the activities that constitute the language of that part of the brain.
The Developmental Movement Therapy program goes back to the basics to allow the child or adult to re-grow themselves, in a sense, in a more healthy and safe environment. We choose and prescribe activities that stimulate sub-cortical and cortical structures of the brain, and find that this stimulation consistently brings about changes in behavior, perceptual and motor skills, and academic and social functioning. The activities prescribed are the same movements one sees in children from birth to 6+ years. When we work with a child like Alice at the Developmental Movement Center, we work first with the lowest, most primitive level of dysfunction, thus helping her re-grow herself on top of a solid foundation of neurological health.
Some of the early activities we prescribe for clients at the Developmental Movement Center may include crawling on the belly, and using body positions that are homolateral (the arm and leg on the same side are engaged, then the arm and leg on the opposite side). When the deepest levels of dysfunction have been successfully addressed, we begin to work on the next highest structures that test showing some dysfunction. For many children and adults, this means rising to hands and knees and creeping, emphasizing cross-lateral activities (right arm with left leg, and left arm with right leg), vestibular and sensory stimulation.
After two months of work, Alice continued to be behind in reading and one and a half
years behind in math, though she had grown considerably in both areas. She still had a very poorly developed time sense. In the month following her re-evaluation, we saw her time sense awaken and we also saw a very difficult shift in her mood. Alice, now seeming to realize how old she was and at what grade level a child her age should be, became depressed and easily upset. In a sense, she had come out of her fog and didn't like the landscape. We revised her work and gave her many self-affirming activities to do on a daily basis.
After two months of these activities, Alice was again evaluated. At that time significant elements of her life were markedly different. She had jumped two grade levels in math and three quarters of a year in reading. She was no longer having tantrums in school, and her teacher commented on how well she got along with other students. Both the school and her father remarked that she had a much more pleasant attitude. Her memory, which had been poor, improved dramatically. She no longer used baby talk, and had very little slur in her speech.
She was no longer hypersensitive to light or sound. She was much less stiff, and her
overall clumsiness was "50 percent better" by her father's estimate. Her right foot no longer appeared clubbed, and she had no complaints of pain in her leg. She had become very cuddly and her nightmares had completely disappeared.
While it is not the brain stem or lower cortical structures that ultimately learn to read, there are very important reasons for organizing these areas of the central nervous system first when working with learning disabled, head injured, or otherwise dysfunctional adults and children. Each brain, or section of brain, is enhanced by the brain above it, and that higher brain works through the lower portions to perform. However, when there is dysfunction, the lower portions of the brain use the upper portion, rather than the upper portion using the lower. This limits the use of our very brilliant cortex, which is one of the reasons why we are known to use less than ten percent of our upper brain. When, at the Developmental Movement Center, we take an individual back through their early development, we give them the opportunity to ultimately use more of the creative, artistic, intellectual, and civilized part of the brain.
What is so exciting about Developmental Movement Therapy is that with proper stimulation the brain keeps growing and changing. The brain is very plastic and at any age we can start changing. At the Developmental Movement Center, we have worked with a 70-year- old woman who was illiterate all of her life. When she began doing this work along with some tutoring, her life opened up and she began to be able to do all sorts of things-to read, to play the piano, and to ride the bus without anti-motion sickness medication. Her speech became more coherent, and fellow community college students said she was becoming much more lively and social on campus.
You don't have to wait until you are an adult with learning problems and perceptual and motor deficits. You don't even have to wait until a child tests learning disabled in the 3rd grade. There is much we can do for our children right now to enhance their neurological growth.
First, remember that the floor is a friend. Even the smallest newborn needs time on a warm, but smooth surface, on their tummy to stimulate reflexes and learn to crawl. Playpens, jumpers and walkers should be taken out of the homes of families that want to do the best for their children. Babies should be given as much time as possible in protected, hazard-free areas to learn to crawl, to creep, and to experiment with the movement their bodies can make.
We must respect the slow" but magnificent growth process of the central nervous system in the first six to eight years of life.
We should never encourage them to sit up before they are ready or to stand and walk when they prefer to move on hands and knees. Many of the children with whom we work were early walkers, and could get about quite nicely at seven to nine months. They are also learning disabled. We must respect the slow, but magnificent growth process of the central nervous system in the first six to eight years of life. If we give it time and encourage its full functioning at each stage, we are enhancing a lifetime of intellectual, artistic, and emotional health.